


If I look back I am lost

by mobiusmobiles



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe, Female Uchiha Sasuke, Uchiha Sasuke-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:28:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 10,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28485369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mobiusmobiles/pseuds/mobiusmobiles
Summary: In a world in which Sasuke unlocks the Sharingan before the massacre, different assumptions form after she unlocks the Mangekyo during the massacre.
Comments: 78
Kudos: 163





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't tag much for this fic because I genuinely do not know where I'm going with it so the tags may change as things progress. I've never written a fic before so we'll see how this goes.

“Shisui is dead.”

Even as her mind clouds with confusion, the world around Sasuke blooms in sudden clarity. She can see every detail of Itachi’s face as he sits across from her, every shuriken mark in every tree in the clearing. She sees the intensity in Itachi’s eyes sharpen as he looks at her.

“Sasuke, do you trust me?” he asks suddenly.

“Of course I do”

“Close your eyes and focus on cutting off any chakra to them.”

She does and finds a stream of it that she has not deliberately sent there. It is shocking considering how difficult molding chakra into the Great Fireball Technique had been. She opens her eyes again.

“Aniki, was that the Sharingan?” she asks.

“It was. I am very proud of you but it is important that you don’t tell anyone about it yet. Shisui needs to be mourned properly but Otou-sama will be distracted with your training if he knows now.”

“But don’t I need to know how to use it?”

Itachi’s gaze sharpens for a moment again, visible even without the Sharingan. “Give me a month and then we can tell him. There will be plenty of time left before the academy and you can train with me until then.”

That sounds reasonable. After all, Shisui deserves to be mourned well.

\---

As she sees the blade draw across her mother’s throat, chakra comes into her eyes again but something is different, sharper. She cuts it off, she doesn’t want to remember this but then Itachi tells her to hate him and casts a genjutsu named for a god and she knows, Sharingan or not, she will never forget any of it.

\---

They keep her in interrogation for days, she does not know how many. It is a theme these days, the not-knowing. 

She does not know why Itachi killed them. She does not know why he didn’t kill her. She does not know why he forced her to watch him kill them, forced her to kill them, forced her to be the ones killed for so long in his illusion.

They have already burned the bodies. She should have been the one to do it. She knows the jutsu now, learned it at Shisui’s pyre. She does not know why she is not more angry about this.

She goes to the shrine anyway. Even if the bodies are gone she can still pray for her family.

At some point the grief overwhelms her and she feels the chakra surge to her eyes again. Writing appears on the walls and she takes it all in, almost grateful for the distraction until she learns about the new, sharper clarity she felt That Night. And then-

_The eye taken from thy brother is eternal._

Oh. Maybe she knows why Itachi didn’t kill her after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never seen Shippuden so I don't know if it's originally from there or not but I took the one line of shrine text from Dreaming of Sunshine on fanfiction.net. Title is from Game of Thrones.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Human eyes actually stop growing at 20 or 21 but I'm chalking this up to chakra shenanigans because I want it to be 16.

Sasuke decides quickly on her new goal in life. One day, she will be burned with her own eyes. It helps to have something concrete to focus on.

In pursuit of her new goal, she discovers that eyes stop growing at sixteen. She assumes this is what Itachi is waiting for which gives her just under eight years to become stronger than Itachi.

Itachi who is five years older, Itachi who her father has said is the strongest Uchiha to ever live, Itachi who managed to kill all 186 Uchiha who had been living in the compound on That Night, Itachi who-

It is a daunting goal but the only alternative is to give up and that is unthinkable. She will keep her eyes, whatever it takes. 

(She refuses to wonder if losing them would let her forget the parts of That Night they burned into her memory. She refuses to think about how sometimes when she loses them in her dreams she is grateful. She refuses to think about how she might be able to rest after they're gone.

It is lucky she has always been stubborn.)

\---

The academy starts two months after That Night and is completely worthless. The children are weak, the teachers coddle them, and after spending an entire week in classes she has learned nothing. Something must be done.

That weekend she combs through every house in the compound with her Sharingan. She takes scrolls, books, weapons, and anything else that seems even vaguely useful to teach herself with. 

She discovers that she is too small for anything bigger than a tanto and that lightning jutsu come more easily to her than fire. She discovers how to use her Sharingan to cast genjutsu, to copy chakra patterns, to memorize pages of documents. She discovers how to use it to make black flames that don’t go out for days. She discovers that it is still not enough.

Books and scrolls can teach her enough so that she can win in academy spars but that isn’t enough to be stronger than Itachi. She can’t just be the best in her year; she needs to be the best in Konoha.

Sasuke can’t ask anyone for help with this. When someone trains you, they learn about the skills you already have and she cannot afford for anyone to know anything about her. Itachi had taught her one final lesson before he left and it was that she cannot trust anyone. 

With that in mind, she puts all of her effort into stealth techniques. Spying on jounin on the training fields won’t be as useful as having someone to fight against but it’s a start and with her Sharingan, she hopes she can make it almost as good.

\---

She spends her ninth birthday at the shrine, her one indulgence in her schedule. She feels guilty for not visiting more often. She feels guilty for not training. The guilt is an ever-present feeling. She hopes it will lessen with time. (It does not.)

\---

Sasuke gets good grades without really trying. She isn’t learning anything new as far as written tests go and no one can beat her in a spar. She needs the experience that will only come with being a ninja though, so she copes as best as she can. She reads books under the table during lectures and tries not to think about how much time she is wasting. Until she notices a problem.

Her eyesight has always been excellent even without the Sharingan but one day shortly after her birthday she realizes that the pages under the desk are blurry. She cannot read them in the low lighting. This is only the beginning.

She realizes it has to do with her Sharingan but she cannot stop using it, cannot slack in her training. So she adapts. She uses chakra to sense her way around and stops wearing her hair up so she can use it to cover her eyes for written tests. 

By her tenth birthday she is completely blind without her Sharingan. 

By her eleventh birthday, it has been so long since she saw herself in a mirror that she does not know what she looks like.

(She refuses to be grateful.)


	3. Chapter 3

“Team 7 will be Uchiha Sasuke, Nara Shikamaru, and Inuzuka Kiba.”

“Team 8 will be Aburame Shino, Hyuuga Hinata, and Hyuuga Hanabi.”

“Team 10 will be Akimichi Choji, Yamanaka Ino, and Haruno Sakura.”

\---

The team assignments could be worse. The Inuzuka is loud and the Nara lazy but at least she isn’t stuck with someone weak like the Akimichi boy or shrill like Haruno. Added to the fact that they seem to be slotted as a combat team and Sasuke could almost say she’s pleased with the assignment.

Then, she meets her sensei. Well, not immediately, of course.

No, first, she has to wait three hours at the academy, watching as team after team leaves ahead of her. Then, she has to listen to Inuzuka yell at their sensei when he finally does show up for being late, as if a jonin cares a bit about what he thinks, and lower the entire team’s standing in their sensei’s eyes (or eye as it seems and she is definitely pushing the panic attack she feels coming at that until she’s alone).

Then, they get around to introductions.

Their sensei’s name is Hatake Kakashi and that is all they get out of him.

Inuzuka apparently likes dogs (not surprising) and dislikes “arrogant bastards like her” (surprising, she doesn’t think they’ve ever spoken). Nara spends most of his time cloud watching and getting out of work (not surprising but concerning anyway).

When it’s Sasuke’s turn to speak, she suddenly realizes how long it’s been since she’s spoken to anyone and the knowledge seems to make the words stick in her throat.

“My name is Uchiha Sasuke.”

Accurate, easy.

“I like… reading.”

Not entirely accurate but she doesn’t know if anything would be and she doesn’t want to mess up the very first thing their new sensei asks of her.

“I dislike the color red.”

So accurate it’s an understatement.

“My hobby is training and my dream is to be a jonin by 16.”

Training may be a stretch of the word hobby and her stated “dream” is practically a joke in terms of difficulty compared to the real one but it will provide a cover for her intensity in pursuing her real goal.

And then Sensei attempts to intimidate them, tells them some vague information about a test tomorrow, and disappears. Sasuke replaces with a rock on the street below them and heads to train without further acknowledging her new teammates. It’s probably best to start out how she plans to continue.


	4. Chapter 4

Sasuke is the first to arrive at training ground 3. She begins a warm up and stretching routine immediately, partly because she doesn’t want to waste time when she could be training but mostly so that the others don’t attempt any kind of conversation when they arrive. 

By the time she’s done the others are there. They both immediately lie down and seemingly go back to sleep which suits Sasuke just fine. She starts doing laps of the field. She’s twelve miles in before Inuzuka stirs and eighteen before he gets bored enough to try to wake up Nara. It doesn’t seem to work well.

Sasuke doesn’t know what the test today is going to be so she stops at twenty, going into more stretches. It’s an hour after the meeting time but based on yesterday, that doesn’t necessarily mean that their sensei will be here soon. She runs through her katas for lack of anything else to do and feels annoyance creeping up on her the more time passes.

(Uchiha are not naturals at suppressing emotion. Their feelings have always been larger than life. It is one of many things she regrets inheriting from her clan.)

(This, the Sharingan, her father’s rage, her mother’s laugh-)

(It is always an incomplete list. Being an Uchiha, being the last loyal Uchiha, is not an enviable experience. There is always more to regret.)

\---

When their sensei finally arrives, it is eleven am and Sasuke is quietly seething. Inuzuka and Nara have been playing shogi for the last hour or so but when Sensei arrives Inuzuka knocks the board over in his haste to stand.

“You’re late!” he yells, unreasonably loud as he usually is, but also not wrong.

“A black cat crossed my path so I had to take the long way around.”

Even Nara seems sceptical of this but there isn’t anything they can do about it. Sensei’s eye curves upward and Sasuke’s frustration deepens further (she still has not had time to properly panic about that one eye). 

Sensei explains the test and tells them to start. All three disappear.

Sasuke only briefly considers using her Sharingan to set him on fire. He did say to come at him with intent to kill but it would probably destroy the bells too and she can’t have that.

She’s still considering a course of action when Nara ambles out of the tree line. It is such an unexpected move that she actually stops planning and activates her Sharingan to see what he’ll do.

He stops several feet away from Sensei and yawns before addressing Sasuke and Inuzuka instead of their opponent. 

“None of us are strong enough to take the bells from a jonin on our own. I’m going to find somewhere to strategize. If you actually want to win, you’ll come too.”

And then he turns and walks back into the trees.

Sasuke lies to herself about a lot of things but she cannot help but admit he is right in this, as much as it burns her to do so. She cuts the chakra to her eyes and follows his chakra.

\---

Nara doesn’t seem surprised when both Sasuke and Inuzuka show up. 

“I don’t think this test is about the bells,” he says. “Genin teams almost always have three genin on them, we’ve already registered with the tower as genin so at most we’ll be moved to the Genin Corps, and he has to know that we couldn’t beat him on our own anyway which means that he’s lying about the test. The only purpose I can think of for that is to see if we’ll work together when the odds are stacked against us. We need to attack him together if we want to pass.”

It makes sense but-

“How sure of this are you?” Sasuke asks. She cannot afford to waste time if he’s wrong.

“75 percent. But I’m a hundred percent sure that none of us will pass on our own.”

Not great odds but she thinks the odds on her own are probably worse. She nods at him and Inuzuka grumbles but agrees so all that’s left is a plan. Nara has one of those too apparently and is more than happy to explain.

\---

They don’t get the bells. 

Sasuke feels a little bad about this because she thinks they would have done better if she had told Nara more accurate information about her skill level. However, while passing this test is important to her, she’s not going to reveal possible weaknesses to someone who has proved as intelligent as Nara, teammate or no.

(She had trusted Itachi. It had seemed like such a small request-)

They end up passing anyway. Sensei leads them to the memorial stone for a speech before he dismisses them for the day. 

(The memorial stone holds Uchiha names but none from That Night; Itachi hadn’t been a missing nin yet.)

She has spent years in the Academy working for this day, when she is finally officially a genin-

It feels so small all of a sudden. What is genin status and a headband compared to where she needs to be?

Sasuke trains so hard that she falls in bed exhausted that evening even with the time wasted waiting for Sensei. 

(She should have made time to panic about Sensei’s hidden eye when she was awake. Maybe then her dreams wouldn’t be convinced it was a Sharingan.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sasuke is not psychic. Her brain would make the same assumption about anyone with one eye. This time it just happens to be right.


	5. Chapter 5

Training as a genin starts out as useless as the academy. Their “sensei” continues to be hours late and refuses to teach them anything useful, stubbornly sticking to teamwork exercises and occasionally setting them to spar against each other. 

Missions are even more useless. Apparently civilians can’t be bothered to do their own chores and so Team 7 is stuck doing them at least half the day, every day. 

Sasuke is beginning to get desperate. She will never improve at this rate. She doesn’t even have time to watch other ninja train anymore when they’re done for the day, much less train herself. 

Sasuke doesn’t want to show all of her skills to Nara and Inuzuka but she also can’t afford to waste hours every morning to their sensei’s whims. She continues to run but also begins to work on advanced chakra control exercises as they wait. Most of the exercises are discrete enough that she thinks it unlikely the others will notice. So of course, Nara notices.

She’s sitting several feet away from where Nara and Inuzuka are again playing shogi (Inuzuka seems to be improving, but slowly, as they play it every day) and working on attaching chakra strings to blades of grass without tearing them when Nara speaks.

“Do you want to be a medic?”

Inuzuka responds before she can, “What because she’s the girl? Not cool man, you’re probably the one they slotted for support.”

“No, idiot, because unless she wants to be a puppeteer, I can’t think of another reason she would be practicing with chakra strings at our age,” Nara says, not seeming bothered by the idea that he’s the support member of their team. 

Inuzuka jumps up and runs over to watch her rip grass to shreds. “Wait, you can make chakra strings? Not cool, are you just naturally good at everything?”

Sasuke doesn’t really know what to say to that. No, she isn’t naturally good at everything, that was Itachi, but she doesn’t want to reveal as much with her answer and have him think her weak. 

“Hn.”

“Is that all you have to say?!” Inuzuka is much too close to her now and she feels her whole body tense in preparation for a fight. Nara pulls Inuzuka away before either of them can swing. She isn’t sure if she’s grateful.

“But really, do you want to be a medic?”

“No.” 

“Well then why bother with advanced exercises like that when you could be practicing something else?”

She obviously can’t say it’s because she doesn’t trust them to know her real skill set. She doesn’t think anyone would buy something frivolous, like that she just enjoyed it. She goes with a slightly less dangerous answer and hopes, for the first time, that it will be a while before Sensei shows up.

“I don’t trust Sensei not to spring a more difficult mission or training on us without warning. This is less tiring than most other things I could be doing.”

Nara raises his one brow. “External chakra manipulation isn’t tiring?”

“Hn.”

Inuzuka looks about to rage again and she would much rather fight him than fend off Nara’s questions but Nara is between them and she doesn’t think he will let Inuzuka interrupt. He looks far too interested for her comfort.

“How much chakra do you have?”

“More than you.”

“How much more?”

“Enough.”

“Do you know more techniques than what we learned at the academy?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“What kind of techniques do you know?”

“A little bit of a lot of things.”

All the Uchiha she knew had been good at fending off questions by being abrasive. It was almost as essential to their clan as the Sharingan. The only charming one of the whole lot of them was Shisui. Her eyes ache for a moment, straining against activating at the well of grief Shisui’s memory came with.

Oddly enough, it is Inuzuka who pulls Nara away this time. Nara backs off but with a glint in his eyes that makes it seem like this will be a brief reprieve. 

Sensei arrives an hour later and Sasuke expects the usual cycle to repeat: pointless chores followed by pointless training followed by as much high intensity training as she can get at home before she passes out for the night. Shikamaru, apparently, has other plans.

\---

They’ve just finished cleaning garbage from a public park and are heading back to the training grounds when Sasuke realizes her reprieve will be shorter than she thought.

“Could we do chakra training today?” Nara asks.

Their sensei pauses to raise a brow at him. Or possibly both brows, there really is no way of knowing. 

Sasuke thinks it makes sense for him to be incredulous. Inuzuka has been loudly demanding other types of training for over a week now and has yet to get it. There’s no way-

“Maa, I don’t see why not.”

Inuzuka seems torn between joy at the fact that they’ll actually learn something and rage that Sensei said yes to Nara but not him. Nara, though, is looking directly at her with victory in his eyes. 

Sasuke won’t be able to hold back if Sensei actually tests them. She’s good but not good enough to fake being worse than she is in front of a jonin, especially with teammates who’ve already seen her doing advanced work. 

Sasuke doesn’t let her fear show but she doesn’t bother hiding her anger. The victory in Nara’s eyes only brightens in response.


	6. Chapter 6

When they get to the training ground, Sensei asks if they know how to climb trees without their hands. Nara shrugs and makes a ‘so-so’ gesture with his hand while Inuzuka shakes his head. Sasuke, as usual, stares at him without changing her facial expression at all.

Sensei sighs but gives a minimally-detailed explanation of how to accomplish it before telling them to get to it. Sasuke activates the base-level of her Sharingan to watch and hopefully explain away some of her ability with it.

Inuzuka immediately runs at a tree and gets maybe three steps up it before falling down and landing on his ass. Sasuke honestly isn’t sure he even tried to use chakra. He growls and proceeds to do the exact same thing several times in a row. Stubbornness isn’t always a useful trait, it would seem.

Nara stands at the base of a tree pressing one foot against it and sliding it occasionally before very slowly making his way upward, pausing for a slightly shorter amount of time with each step. He gets about halfway to the first limb before slipping off, though he lands better than Inuzuka.

Sasuke waits a few moments at the base of her chosen tree but starts walking up it when she catches Sensei looking at her too closely. She heaves a sigh like it’s a chore to hide how uneven her breaths are.

Sasuke’s progress up the tree is steady but not fast. She doesn’t bother pretending to slip like Nara does. If Sensei does have any sensing abilities, it will be obvious that she’s faking it which will give away much more than some unexpected skill at chakra control.

She gets to the first limb and turns around, stepping onto the ground at the end smoothly. Inuzuka is, surprisingly, too focused on his tree to glare at her. Nara, unsurprisingly, is not too focused on his tree to smirk at her.

“Well, it looks like Sasuke has the best chakra control of all three of you, making it to the top on her first try like that,” Sensei announces to them all, coming up beside her to put his hand on her shoulder. She doesn’t quite manage to conceal a flinch. Inuzuka, surprising her again, is glaring at Sensei now. She supposes he’s probably angry at Sensei pointing out her beating him like that.

Sensei directs her to the lake and says that she can use the same principles to walk on it before stepping back again. He doesn’t even demonstrate it himself.

Sasuke knows she absolutely cannot use the exact same principles with water as with the tree and expect it to hold her up. She also knows that she cannot know that unless she’s done it or studied it before. Most importantly, she knows that she cannot fake a learning curve from one to the other. 

With that in mind, she steps on to the lake. And begins her kata.

After about five minutes Sensei stops her.

“You’ve done this before.”

It’s not a question so Sasuke doesn’t answer. There’s a sharp exhale from Sensei.

“Do you know any other skills not taught at the academy?”

This time it is a question. Sasuke goes with a shrug. She gets another, sharper, exhale from Sensei.

“Back to it then.”

And that’s that.

\---

The next day Sasuke shows up to the training ground to see Nara already there. She very deliberately does not turn towards him and he doesn’t try to catch her attention. She starts on her laps.

When she’s done Inuzuka is there and he does catch her attention.

“Sasuke! Hey! Come here for a minute!”

She debates just ignoring him but decides it would likely be simpler to just find out what he wants. If she doesn’t like it, she can always go back to ignoring him at that point.

It isn’t Inuzuka who has something to say though.

“You’re both invited over for dinner tonight,” Nara says, not even bothering to try and seem casual, “My parents would like to meet my teammates. My dad, especially, is looking forward to it.”

Inuzuka agrees immediately, though there is something wary in his voice, or possibly something warning. Either way, it’s odd enough to register even through the alarm bells going off in Sasuke’s head.

She can’t say no to an invitation to the jonin commander’s house. He’s supposed to be a genius though and she absolutely does not want to be around any more of those. Beyond that, she doesn’t even remember the proper etiquette for visiting another clan’s compound. There’s something about a gift, maybe? She has no idea what an appropriate one would be though. She thinks there might even be specific words she’s supposed to say.

Once again, though, Nara has backed her into a corner. All these years of hard training and she still can’t compare to actual geniuses, still can’t outthink them, can’t out-plan them, can’t win against-

She deliberately steadies her breathing before nodding at Nara. If she doesn’t know the right words, she just won’t say anything. They might think her rude but she won’t let them think her stupid. 

She assumes Nara is smirking, his energy certainly feels smug, but without her Sharingan active she can’t be sure. She glares anyway.

Sasuke is still glaring, in fact, when Sensei shows up.

“Well my cute little genin, it seems we’re going to need to do some evaluations. I’ve been working off some assumptions of your skill level that may not be accurate and, after all, it is very important for teams to know each other’s exact skill levels in an emergency. So up, up, up, we’re going to start with taijutsu today but don’t worry, we’ll get to test every skill you have before we’re through.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The character Nara Ensui is from the fic Deduction in Shadows by GremlinSR which is amazing. I highly recommend it. He doesn't make an appearance but his name does.
> 
> Also, based on Shisui’s wikipedia page, I am not sticking to canon on his backstory. I still haven’t read all of Shippuden and I’ve watched maybe three episodes of the anime for it. I’d gotten too into Naruto fanfiction by the time I got around to it and it just seemed disappointing. I have seen all the openings though, multiple times, because I love them.

Sensei has them spar with each other again first: taijutsu only so no Sharingan.

Inuzuka and Nara are paired up for the first spar. Both have the same issues Sasuke has been seeing in them from day one.

Inuzuka is aggressive and good at making openings but he’s bad at capitalizing on them. He’s even worse at utilizing openings he didn’t expect. If his opponent tripped of their own accord during a spar, she’s not sure he would even notice. He’s sloppy, too. There’s no grace or precision in his movements. Sasuke usually can’t tell where exactly he was aiming with his blows, if he aimed at all.

Nara is the opposite. He’s very cautious and his taijutsu, while more precise than Inuzuka, often lacks force. He’s good at using the environment to his advantage but in a spar with a set boundary that can be less than useful. He can usually predict what his opponent will do but if he’s surprised it takes him a long time to adapt his plans.

It’s not a short spar but Inuzuka wins, as is usual between the two of them, and Sensei sends Sasuke to fight Nara.

He does much more poorly against Sasuke. She has a much more varied set of moves which lets her surprise him more often. She dreads the day he sees all of her repertoire.

Inuzuka’s spar against her is also short. Her sense of him is a little blurrier because of how fast and choppy his movements are but it doesn’t make up for the difference in their skill levels.

Sensei has them each spar with him after that, one at a time rather than all at once like during their test. 

Nara goes first. It’s the same issues in this match as with his matches with Inuzuka and her. A straightforward taijutsu battle is definitely not something he is suited for. Sasuke does notice that Sensei is holding back though. She thinks he may be performing at mid-chunin level at most. Sensei knocks Nara down easily enough but doesn’t call the spar until he’s done it several times, insisting Nara get up and come at him again immediately.

Inuzuka goes next. His match is slightly more interesting, not because of anything Inuzuka does, but because she can see small adjustments to Sensei’s fighting style. With Nara, he capitalized on moments when Nara should be pushing and didn’t. With Inuzuka, he is finding holes in his form and exploiting them. It’s frightening how easily he saw their biggest problem areas.

Sensei spars with Sasuke longer than with either of the others. He’s much faster than Inuzuka so even with more graceful movements, his form is even blurrier. He continuously gets Sasuke off balance by feinting and forcing her to dodge and then uses that to knock her down. Sasuke knows that with her Sharingan she could do far better but it is incredibly frustrating anyway. 

As she gets more frustrated, Sasuke also gets more reckless which both helps and doesn’t. She manages to land a blow on him once but she also gets knocked down twice as fast the rest of the time.

Sensei has each of them run through their kata and then calls it a day, leaving them with time to go home and wash up before going to the Nara compound for dinner. Sasuke would rather keep getting knocked into the ground.

\---

Sasuke shows up at exactly the agreed upon time with an unopened bottle of shochu she found in the pantry. Inuzuka is already there and apparently brought a pot of honey. Sasuke’s pleased enough that host gifts are actually a thing people do that she doesn’t mind all that much that hers seems to be more extravagant than necessary. It’s not like she was going to drink it.

(Sasuke had brought a bottle of alcohol to her lips exactly once after That Night. It reminded her so much of her father that she ended up running off to throw up without drinking a single drop.)

“Oh, this is very nice, thank you so much! Please come in!”

Nara’s mother is… enthusiastic.

Nara’s father is less so.

Sasuke ends up sitting between Inuzuka and Nara’s mother, across from Nara himself.

“Please call us Yoshino and Shikaku, there’s no need to be formal.”

Sasuke will absolutely not be doing that. She doesn’t really intend to ever address either of them directly, though, so it should be fine.

They eat sukiyaki and Sasuke finds that having food is very helpful in her efforts to avoid actually speaking. She nods, shrugs, and makes sure to have food in her mouth as often as possible.

Inuzuka does most of the talking, telling stories from their time as genin that are either wildly embellished or have somehow been erased from Sasuke’s memory. He’s just finished one involving a cat-shaped demon and a broomstick that was surprisingly close to accurate when he finally asks Nara’s mother a question.

Nara’s mother had been saying that she thinks she remembers that exact demon from her genin days so Inuzuka asks, “Who was on your genin team?”

It’s a reasonable question and does not account for the heavy pause that comes after it.

“I was teammates with Nara Ensui and Uchiha Hisao.”

Sasuke’s face is already turned down and she goes very still. Hisao was Shisui’s father. He was her father’s brother. He hadn’t lived with them like Shisui had but he had been with them for dinner most nights. He is the one who taught her to make paper cranes. They used to make them together almost every night before dinner. “Training her fingers for hand signs,” he’d told her father but he would giggle with her after her father’s back was turned.

Sasuke hasn’t made a paper crane for years now.

Her Sharingan activates briefly but she shuts it off almost before it registers. 

Kiba asks some follow-up question about Nara Ensui and the conversation moves on but Sasuke cannot. She does not look up again until she hears everyone finish eating.

Sasuke stands, bows, thanks them for the meal, and leaves without another word. She very deliberately does not run.

When she gets home, Sasuke opens her box of origami paper. Her hands are shaking enough that all of her creases are slightly off. She still remembers every one of the steps though. It is likely the worst paper crane she has ever made. 

She pretends that that’s why she tears it to pieces after.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting two chapters in a short time-span because I can't sleep so, if you're a returning reader, please make sure you read Chapter 7.

Sasuke dreams of her family that night (not of That Night, though, which is unusual). Shisui’s absence is heavy in the house in the way that it was in the days just after his funeral. Her father’s back is turned no matter where she stands. She screams his name but he does not turn. Her mother is turned toward her always but her face shifts every time Sasuke looks away. When she wakes, she isn’t sure she knows which one was real.

(She sees Itachi’s face too but instead of shifting, it splits in two. The side she’d loved is crying.)

Needless to say, Sasuke is already off-balance when she gets to the training grounds.

She’s even earlier than usual today so she manages to get in twenty miles before anyone else shows up. It does not help.

She stops as Inuzuka walks into the field and by the time she finishes stretching both Nara and Sensei have arrived. She thinks Sensei might even have been slightly early. It certainly doesn’t help her feel less off-kilter than before. 

“Alright, today we’re going to start by testing your accuracy with kunai and shuriken.” There is something odd about Sensei’s voice as he continues, “We’ll start with kunai. Sasuke, for the first round I want you to keep your Sharingan off so we can compare the accuracy with and without it.”

Sensei takes something out of his pocket and goes around to several trees, drawing targets on them as he goes. Then he comes back to stand next to her.

“Okay, go.”

Sasuke throws at the approximate center of each target he drew. She may be a few millimeters off but even without the Sharingan she has a very good memory. When she’s done, she turns her face towards Sensei expectantly.

He doesn’t say anything for several moments before exhaling sharply. 

“You can’t see without your Sharingan.”

It is not a question. Sasuke doesn’t respond. There’s another sharp exhale.

“How long?”

Sasuke shrugs. Then, “How did you know?”

“I asked first.” It’s usually a playful saying. Sensei does not sound playful.

Sasuke does not want to answer but she doesn’t think she’s ever heard Sensei this serious. He knows the worst of it already. It still stings her throat to answer.

“A little over a year.” 

“And you didn’t tell anyone?”

“Who would I tell?” Sasuke’s tone slips a little deeper into anger than she strictly means for it to go.  
“The academy teachers, Kakashi-sensei, one of us, literally anyone,” Nara barks out in a list before Sensei answers and Sasuke had probably made a mistake forgetting about him and Inuzuka. He’s walking towards her now and they weren’t that far away to begin with.

“Cut it out, dude,” Inuzuka says, pulling him back. 

“Shikamaru, enough,” Sensei tells him. He hasn’t turned away from Sasuke though. She feels the uncomfortable urge to curl up and hide. She straightens as tall as she can instead. Her instincts, outside of a fight at least, are usually wrong anyway.

“You must have good chakra sense if you’ve been able to fake it that long.”

Sasuke shrugs again and this time she gets a full-on sigh.

“Well,” Sensei pauses long enough that Sasuke has enough time to worry, “I have chakra sensing testing scheduled for two days from now. I suppose it will keep until then. Go collect your kunai.”

Sasuke doesn’t move immediately. 

“How did you know?”

“I suspected after sparring with you yesterday. As for today, go ahead and activate your Sharingan.”

Sasuke does. Three of her kunai are directly on the bullseye of three trees. The tree the fourth kunai is in doesn't have a target on it. She’s been tricked. Again.

There is absolutely nothing she can do about it.

She goes to collect her kunai.

Nara grumbles something but Sasuke is too far away to hear while over at the trees. Sensei evidently does though because he shoots Nara a sharp look and Nara glares but stops muttering. 

“You’re up, Shikamaru,” Sensei pushes him slightly to get him moving.

After target practice, Sensei has them move on to proving they can set a camp and make traps. Nara’s eyes follow Sasuke the whole time.

She has never wished more to be less interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously, Kakashi would like very much to know what's up with Sasuke's eyes. However, he is socially broken in exactly the right ways to still recognize when pushing someone on something might break them (or break them even further). Honestly, he's been panicking since he came up with the theory yesterday and is probably going to run to an Adultier Adult at the first available opportunity with some very specific, hypothetical questions.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter but I don’t think there will be a good place to end for another little while so I decided to cut it here.

The evaluations continue and Sasuke continues to consistently outperform Nara and Inuzuka. She knows she can’t get away with acting as though she doesn’t know any genjutsu or can only sense things within a foot of her now. It doesn’t change how much she wants to.

Sasuke had thought that she hated the routine she’d fallen into but this is much worse. Every time she has to reveal something new about herself or her skills it feels like she’s being scraped raw all over and Nara’s stare only pours salt into the wounds.

The only thing they don’t test is her Sharingan. She absolutely refuses. The Uchiha clan has kept the secrets of their eyes for hundreds of years and it will not stop with her. Especially not when the person trying to discover them is probably already missing an eye. 

(She’d been hoping that that particular dream would only happen once. She should really just stop hoping for things.)

For the other tests, Sasuke does her best to keep at least something back in all of them. She sets a limit for herself every day and simply refuses to even attempt to cross it. If pushed, she makes minimal changes to a lower level exercise to look like she’s attempting it and pretends to give up out of frustration. Or arrogance. Or boredom. 

Actually, since she never really says why she’s giving up, she supposes that the others might be assuming any number of reasons. As long as they stop pushing, she doesn’t care.

It’s a relief, then, when the evaluations are over. Sasuke hasn’t revealed any jutsu higher than a C-rank and has been claiming her chakra sense to be about a hundred yards smaller than it actually is. It’s not as much as she’d like to have in reserve but it’s been difficult enough hiding anything from a jonin and one particularly nosy teammate. 

Only one because Inuzuka, surprisingly, hasn’t pushed her on it at all, has actually stopped the others from continuing to push her more than once. Sasuke doesn’t know what his game is but she’s glad it’s working out in her favor for now. Most likely, it won’t anymore after he realizes that all this isn’t making her trust him. She’s not looking forward to that happening.

Now that the evaluations are over though, it’s back to pointless chores for at least half the day.

\---

Sasuke stands with the others in the missions office and suspects they are all wondering the same thing: why is the Hokage handing out missions?

“Kakashi,” the Sandaime says, “your team took leave from missions for several days to do skill evaluations, did you not?”

“We did.”

“And would you say you found your team to be adequate?” 

“Of course, sir.”

“Well then, I think it’s about time you all took a more difficult mission. I have a C-rank here for an escort to the Land of Waves. You can meet the client at the front gates in two hours.”

The Sandaime pauses and looks over Sasuke, Nara, and Inuzuka. Sasuke feels herself move so she’s slightly in front of the others without thinking about it. The Sandaime smiles and it is a pleased smile but it is not a nice one.

“Congratulations, Team 7. I’m sure you’ll make us proud.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent a while considering whether or not to do the wave mission. I ended up deciding that even if I didn’t, it would have to be very similar circumstances, just with different names, to force the interactions I wanted. Plus, this way I can still skip the boring stuff.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone knows what happened up to now in the wave arc. We can assume Sasuke knew about the puddle ninja early. Since it doesn’t actually change anything, though, I’m not including it. I was really just excited to get this chapter out.

Sasuke should be moving. At the very least she should tell someone that they have a spectator in the trees. But she can’t. She can’t move.

Because Zabuza had said Sharingan.

Sensei moves his headband and sure enough, there it is.

He never would have gotten away with such a profanity when her clan had been alive which means it must be from That Night.

While Sasuke was being interrogated (did they even want answers or did they just need time), someone had desecrated her family.

How many shinobi in Konoha have them?

Sasuke has seen shinobi wandering around with one or both eyes covered. Were there more after That Night?

Surely there were. There were thirty-four Uchiha with active Sharingan in Konoha That Night. Only two were under sixteen. If they were going to desecrate one body, Sasuke has no doubt that they didn’t stop there.

There are up to sixty-four Konoha shinobi wandering around with Sharingan who do not deserve them.

Clan law says that stealing a Sharingan demands death. Not warrants. Demands.

Sasuke is the only one left to carry it out.

There are up to sixty-four of them and all of them must die.

Starting with Sensei.

If Sasuke wasn’t already frozen, she might freeze now.

Sensei is fighting a missing-nin now. An A-rank missing-nin. If Sasuke were looking for a time to kill him, she couldn’t ask for a better one.

Zabuza traps Sensei in a water prison jutsu. Sensei is telling all of them to run. If they do, he will die. If Zabuza kills Sensei, Sasuke won’t have to.

Nara and Inuzuka are staring at her. They have no chance without her, whether they stay or go. She knows this and they know it as well.

Sasuke plants her foot to pivot and run. 

She locks eyes with Sensei. 

Her fingers move through hand motions fast, faster than she can think.

(Paper cranes, she’d practiced paper cranes to prepare for hand signs. Had Uncle Hisao been laughing with her? Had he been laughing at-)

It is not Uncle Hisao’s eye in Sensei’s face. Sasuke is sure.

(She cannot remember her mother’s face.)

It is not her father’s.

(The Uchiha had never used cameras. It cheapened the Sharingan. There are no photographs in the compound.)

She does not know who’s eye it is.

(If she does not know their faces now, she will never know them.)

She knows that they were Uchiha.

(There is one face she remembers completely, the only one she had seen with her Sharingan.)

(He had been family, too.)

Sasuke finishes the seals for the Great Fireball.

She does not aim it at Sensei.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of clan law demanding death for stolen Sharingan is something I got from In Good Company by weialala. It’s an amazing fic and I highly recommend it. There’s another idea from that fic that I’ll likely include later on as well but we haven’t quite gotten there yet.


	11. Chapter 11

It takes Inuzuka claiming he needed Nara to be quiet so he could listen for enemies for Nara to stop badgering Sasuke with questions as they carried Sensei to the client’s house. So, Sasuke is disappointed but not surprised when Nara starts up again when she heads outside to practice kata after dinner. 

“How does Sensei have a Sharingan?”

Sasuke doesn’t even look at him.

“If you knew you could help him, why did you wait so long?”

She doesn’t even slow her movements.

“We’re your team. We need to know these things. Just because you think you’re better-”

“Enough! You don’t know anything about me!” Sasuke finally stops going through the kata and whirls to look at him.

Even finally getting an answer doesn’t seem to make Nara any happier.

“That’s the point! We’re your team and you don’t even trust us to know basic information about you! That could be dangerous-”

Sasuke cuts him off again.

“I don’t know how you haven’t learned this yet but I don’t trust anyone! And neither should you. Words like team and family don’t mean anything. They aren’t magic words that stop people from hurting you and if you act like they are you’ll never be able to defend yourself when they fail you! Grow up!”

Sasuke leaves before she can embarrass herself further and luckily Nara doesn’t follow. She isn’t sure what she’d do if he had but she thinks he probably would have come away bleeding.

Sasuke hasn’t made it very far when Nara is joined by Inuzuka. She hides just around the side of the house, hoping he’ll admit why he’s been helping her fend off Nara.

“Did your parents ever tell you who it was that killed Sasuke’s clan?” Inuzuka begins.

“They said a missing-nin did it.”

“That’s kinda true. Uchiha Itachi, Sasuke’s brother, was declared a missing-nin after the massacre.”

“Why wouldn’t they tell me that?” Nara sounds angry now.

“Mom said she didn’t tell me because she didn’t want me to be afraid of my own family. I assume your parents did it for the same reason. The only reason I know now is because I asked about why Sasuke smelled afraid all the time.”

Sasuke hadn’t actually considered that Inuzuka could smell her panic. She’d have to make time panic about that later. 

“And you didn’t tell me?” Nara sounds a few seconds away from attacking Inuzuka and unfortunately, now that Sasuke has heard Inuzuka has actually been defending her, she might have to help him if it comes to blows. 

Assuming she believes him, that is. It’s troubling that she didn’t consider he might be lying until now. She can panic about that later, too.

“It’s not my place to tell you. I was hoping you’d back off until Sasuke was ready but apparently that wasn’t gonna happen. Yeah, Sasuke keeps a lot of secrets but I think it’s understandable all things considered. And besides, you haven’t exactly been making her more likely to trust you, what with all the badgering her about stuff she obviously doesn’t wanna tell you.”

Nara takes a long pause before he answers, “Her not telling us things and lying about her skills could get us killed someday.”

“I guess but the way you’re going about it isn’t going to help. And besides, what she has shown us is still way better than what we can do. It’s not like she’s asking us to carry her. I don’t think it hurts to let her keep her secrets where she wants them. Especially when intruding on them hurts her.”

Nara is very quiet when he answers this time, “I didn’t mean to hurt her.”

“I know, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t.”

Nara and Inuzuka sit very quietly for a long time after that. A few feet away, Sasuke does too.

\---

Sensei wakes up the next day. 

Nara and Inuzuka are very happy about this. Sasuke, on the other hand, is not.

She does eventually get summoned to his room with the others where Sensei tells them that Zabuza is probably still alive and how he came to that conclusion. Sasuke is more than happy to leave it at that so she gets up to go as soon as he’s done.

“Sasuke, I think we need to talk about something,” Sensei’s voice stops her before she can make it to the door. “Could you two give us a few minutes?”

Nara heads out immediately but Inuzuka stares at Sensei for a few seconds first. Eventually, he nods and leaves but Sasuke gets the feeling that he isn’t happy about it.

Sensei is the one who’s insisting they talk so Sasuke doesn’t say a word as she sits back down on the floor, back against the wall and within arm’s reach of the door, just in case. Sensei doesn’t speak immediately, seeming to gather his thoughts first.

When he does speak, it isn’t what Sasuke is expecting. There are no warnings to keep her mouth shut about his eye, no questions about why she hasn’t killed him in his sleep, and no appeals to her sense of team unity to try and keep the peace. Instead, Sensei tells her an almost unbelievable story. He tells her how he got his Sharingan. And then he tells her this:

“Mikoto’s father was clan head at the time and he allowed me to keep Obito’s eye in order to honor his dying wish. Fugaku followed suit when he took over as clan head. Both of them warned me, though, that the next clan head may disagree with them and could insist that I give up Obito’s gift, die, or both. I cannot give up Obito’s eye and I will not abandon my students while we are on a mission. Once we get back to Konoha, though, it will be your decision.”

Sasuke stands up and Sensei tenses.

“If I wanted you dead, I would have left you to Zabuza. I never want to discuss this again.”

She leaves before he can respond.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I swear I didn’t forget about Akamaru but I reread what I’ve written and I realized that I haven't actually mentioned him. I assure you he’s been there, Sasuke just hasn’t really been paying attention to him. 
> 
> Also, I know people don’t dream when they’re unconscious. I just don’t care.

The night after Sensei’s story, Sasuke dreams that she is the one who is trapped under a boulder. Inuzuka is missing an eye. She does not offer her own.

She tastes an apology on her tongue when she wakes and she does not know if she hates herself for it.

\--

Sasuke wouldn’t say she avoids Sensei for the next few days, but she certainly doesn’t go out of her way to be around him. He has, somehow, not only become more important to her than clan law but also gotten her to basically admit to it. It’s not the kind of thing she wants to encourage.

Unfortunately, they are on a mission and he is the team leader so it’s not as if she can avoid him entirely. Even more unfortunately, it’s not as though she has a better option in Nara or Inuzuka. There have been far too many emotions from everyone in the past few days and Sasuke would really like to go back to pretending everyone on this team is just looking out for themselves and she doesn’t care about any of them at all. 

The only upside Sasuke can see is that Nara has stopped trying to force her into answering uncomfortable questions but even that relief is soured by the memory of why that is. Nara didn’t suddenly decide to become a decent person or stop caring about why she does things. He just found out enough about her that his pity overwhelmed his curiosity.

All of this combined means that while Sasuke isn’t exactly happy when the time frame suggests Zabuza is healed and might attack any day now, she’s definitely hoping it happens sooner rather than later so they can all head back to Konoha. If Sasuke can manage the rest of the mission without any more emotional scenes involving her team, she will consider it a success, whether the bridge builder makes it or not.

\---

The ice user is fast, even faster than Sasuke. 

This usually wouldn’t be a problem with the way that the Sharingan allows Sasuke to perceive attacks and dodge efficiently but Sasuke isn’t the only one trapped in the ice jutsu.

Inuzuka and his dog are not used to being on the defensive and it shows. They’re both riddled with senbon and it’s slowing them down even more than usual. Sasuke has been pushing Inuzuka out of the way of the worst attacks but none of them have exactly been gentle.

Sasuke cannot defeat the ice user like this. There’s no time for a counterattack while protecting them both and Sasuke doesn’t know if Inuzuka can take another hit.

They will be trapped here if Sasuke cannot defeat their opponent. She must attack. She knows she must attack.

But Inuzuka yells at Sensei when he’s late. Inuzuka has never won a game of Shogi against Nara but he still plays every day. Inuzuka protects that stupid dog more than he protects himself and it’s going to get him killed one day.

But not today.

Because Inuzuka doesn’t like Sasuke, has never liked her from day one, but he defended her anyway. Because he has never once told a story with any accuracy but he always tells them with more than enough enthusiasm. Because Inuzuka has a sister and he talks about her like she hung the moon, like she’s his hero, like Sasuke used to-

Because of a million reasons and no reasons.

And because Sasuke has survived Shisui’s death, Mother’s, Father’s, Uncle Hisao’s, everyone she ever knew but she will not survive this one. She refuses to outlive him.

(Sasuke has always been stubborn.)

She pushes more chakra into her eyes and the next time the ice user moves, Sasuke puts herself between him and Inuzuka. 

Sasuke doesn’t bother looking at his hands. She isn’t planning to dodge this time.

The Great Fireball uses lots of hand signs. It’s good for when she needs time to think but Sasuke is done thinking.

Sasuke makes the Tiger seal.

Black flames engulf the ice user before Sasuke feels the first senbon, but not by much. 

Not by enough.

The world fades to black before Sasuke even hits the ground.

\---

Sasuke is under a boulder again. Inuzuka is missing an eye. She offers him her own. He does not take it. 

Instead, he lays down beside her. His dog licks tears off her cheek and she does not push him away.

There is a boulder on her chest but Sasuke feels light.


	13. Chapter 13

Sasuke wakes three days later in the bridge builder’s house. Inuzuka and his dog are sitting beside her and for a moment she thinks she’s still dreaming.

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

Sasuke can feel enough aches in her that she thinks shrugging would be a bad idea.

“I’m okay,” she says instead.

Inuzuka sighs but doesn’t actually argue. Instead, he switches topics.

“Look, we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to but you risked your life to save mine. I’ll never forget that.”

Sasuke is very close to taking the out he has given her. He said they don’t have to talk about it. It wouldn’t even be rude this time.

“Anytime,” she says quietly.

Inuzuka’s breath hitches but it evens out again before he continues.

“Back at you,” he says eventually.

\---

Sasuke is well enough to go downstairs for dinner that night (by which she means that no one is going to be able to stop her if they want to avoid injuring her more) so Team 7 sits around the bridge builder’s table to eat. Sensei starts dinner off by announcing that they’ll leave as soon as Sasuke is well enough and quizzing them to make sure they’ll be able to write their reports when they make it back to Konoha. Sasuke doesn’t even manage to make it through five sentences when she’s interrupted by Inuzuka.

“Sasuke, please tell me you know what our names are,” he says.

“Of course I do,” Sasuke says, surprised at the question.

“What are they?”

“Inuzuka Kiba, Nara Shikamaru, and Hatake Kakashi.”

“Then why do you only call me and Shikamaru by our last names and Kakashi-sensei just Sensei?”

“It’s impolite to use someone’s given name if you haven’t been given permission.”

Inuzuka starts to laugh but stops when Sensei sighs and starts to speak.

“Maa, pretty much only the Hyuuga follow that tradition now. For what it’s worth, though, you have permission to call me Kakashi-sensei,” Kakashi-sensei says.

The others echo their permission and Sasuke nods but they still seem to be waiting for something.

“What?” she asks.

“You still haven’t given us permission to use your name,” Shikamaru says.

“You’ve been using my given name since we were put on a team together,” Sasuke responds.

“I’ve actually been using it since we were at the Academy but since you’ve apparently thought I was rude for doing it this whole time, I’d still rather have permission.”

“Fine, you can all use my given name.”

“Good,” Kiba says, with a grin in his voice, “and hey, I’m sorry I thought you didn’t know our names.”

“It’s alright. To be fair, your names are the only ones I actually know” Sasuke says.

"I think that’s the most I’ve ever heard you say at once,” Kiba says. 

Sasuke had been schooled from birth in proper decorum for an Uchiha. She sticks her tongue out at him anyway. Kiba’s eyes go wide and he does it right back, laughing at the same time and nearly biting his tongue off.

“So, if I asked you who Ino was, you would say...?” Kiba asks when he’s done laughing.

“I have no idea who that person is,” Sasuke says which sets him off again.

“Wait,” Shikamaru says, “you know my parents’ names. They introduced themselves when you had dinner at my house.”

He doesn’t say it like he’s trying to prove her wrong or like a challenge. It’s more like he’s confused but unsure of whether he should ask or not. It’s a nice change.

Sasuke is still unsure of her answer when she says, “They did introduce themselves.”

Shikamaru obviously notices her omission and he waits in silence for her to continue.

“I don’t call adult strangers by their first names, even if they ask me to. I may or may not have deliberately forgotten what they were,” Sasuke says eventually.

Shikamaru nods and doesn’t push her on it, so they get back to discussing mission reports. Sasuke stumbles over their names a few times but it happens less and less as they talk.

Kiba sticks his tongue out at her again every time she almost reverts to calling him Inuzuka. It’s ridiculous and improper, but it helps.

\---

“Wait,” Kiba says that night, when they are all supposed to be headed to sleep, “please tell me you know who Akamaru is.”

“Of course I do,” Sasuke says, “but I’ve never met a nin-dog before. I don’t know how he would communicate permission.”

Shikamaru sounds a little like he’s being strangled but Kiba actually seems pleased when he assures her that Akamaru would be fine with her calling him by his name, that he likes her quite a bit, and Akamaru accompanies him with a bark from where he’s lying between their bedrolls.

Sasuke thanks him and he licks her cheek. It’s so unexpected that a short laugh escapes her.

“Alright! Go Akamaru!” Kiba yells, sitting up and pumping his fist.

It’s so ridiculous that she laughs again and soon all four of them, Akamaru included, are laughing uncontrollably.

They don’t stop until Kakashi-sensei appears in the doorway and tells them to get some sleep. For the first time, though, Sasuke thinks she hears a smile in his voice.

\---

Sasuke dreams of Shisui that night as he was in life: strong, kind, and perpetually laughing.

For the first time, it does not hurt until she wakes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of this chapter was written specifically so I could write Sasuke refusing to call Akamaru by his name because he hasn't said that she can


	14. Chapter 14

Sasuke lets the others stop her from taking watch while they are still at the bridge builder’s house but she puts her foot down once they start on the road back to Konoha. If she’s well enough to travel, she’s well enough to take a watch shift.

Kiba has the shift before her on their second night on the road and he doesn’t immediately head to sleep after waking her.

“Hey, my mom wanted me to ask everyone over for dinner the day after we get back from the mission. I wasn’t going to do it because I know how uncomfortable you were at Shikamaru’s house but I think maybe things have changed? If you don’t want to come you definitely don’t have to but I wanted to at least give you the option. For what it’s worth, I think you’d like her and she’d definitely like you.”

Sasuke stares at him for long enough that even she knows it’s getting weird.

“Um, ok then, goodnight,” Kiba says.

Sasuke stays quiet for a few more seconds before she says, “Ok.”

Kiba’s head shoots up, “Ok?”

“Don’t ask again.”

“Right, shutting up now. Goodnight.”

Everything is quiet for a few minutes. Sasuke almost thinks Kiba is asleep when he speaks again.

“Hey, Sasuke.”

“Hn.”

“I’m really glad you’re on my team.”

“Go to sleep.”

“Okay. Goodnight.”

“Seriously, I don’t need you to keep watch with me.”

“I know, I know.”

“Then go to sleep, idiot.”

“Rude.”

Sasuke waits a few more minutes to be sure he’s asleep this time. 

“I’m glad I’m on your team, too.”

\---

Kakashi-sensei gives the team their first day back in Konoha off from training so Sasuke spends it training alone. She finds herself turning to look for her team at least once an hour and she can’t even bring herself to be annoyed by it. Instead, she feels like something has been ripped from her chest every time they aren’t there. It leaves her both wanting to seek them out immediately to be sure that they are alright and wanting to never see them again. In the end, it leaves her relieved when it’s time to go to the Inuzuka compound for dinner, despite her nerves about the evening.

Sasuke almost brings along another bottle of shochu since, even if it is too expensive for a gift, she’d rather have it out of the house, but at the last minute she decides to go out and buy a box of candies instead. If she’s going to bother with caring about Kiba’s safety on missions, she’s going to care about it in Konoha as well. 

Sasuke shows up exactly on time and is not at all surprised that it means she is the first guest there. She would not be at all surprised if Shikamaru slept through the entire day and with Kakashi-sensei’s track record they’ll be lucky if he’s here before the sun goes down.

Something unclenches in her chest when she sees Kiba and he leads her into the kitchen where they find his mother and sister whom she gives the candies. His sister seems to be a much softer version of their mother which is lucky because if there were two copies of his mother there, Sasuke might have had to make an excuse to disappear.

Kiba’s mother is loud and aggressive and so incredibly sure of herself that Sasuke thinks she could even convince Shikamaru he was wrong about something. Maybe it’s a talent only the Inuzuka hold?

Kiba’s mother tells her, “I’ve heard the short version of your mission from this one here but I expect he’s been withholding some of the details from me. Either way, I gather I have some things to thank you for.”

“Hn.”

“He’s not the smartest tool in the shed but he’s got some use to him so I’m glad he made it home,” Kiba’s mother says and hits him on the back hard enough that he nearly loses his balance.

Sasuke cuts a glare at her before she remembers where she is. Getting Kiba’s mother angrier isn’t going to help anyone but she can’t quite clear the emotion from her face despite how hard she’s trying.

Kiba’s mother nods at her after a moment and something in her posture relaxes. 

“Settle down, girl. I figured from the stories that you were a good kid but I had to make sure. If my boy’s going to be leaving the village on missions like that one, I gotta know he has someone watching his back,” she says.

“Lay off of Sasuke. You promised you’d be nice,” Kiba says.

Sasuke feels a little warm at the thought that Kiba would insist his mother promise that. A little annoyed that he thinks she needs it but warm, too.

“Don’t be such a mother hen. The girl isn’t gonna fall down dead because I trick her a little.”

The two bicker back and forth until a knock at the door signals Shikamaru’s arrival. The thing in Sasuke’s chest unclenches even more and she actually starts to have a good feeling about this dinner.

\---

Sasuke feels bewildered as she leaves at the end of the night. The good feeling is still there. She had gone through the whole rest of the night with nothing bad or even significant happening. At one point, Kiba’s sister had asked her a question that made her hesitate to answer while Kiba was in another room and Shikamaru had come to her defense. It was the worst thing that happened the rest of the night and it wasn’t even bad. In fact, Shikamaru defending her had even felt a little good.

Oddly enough, feeling good about everything that happens gives her a worse panic attack that night than she’d had after the night at the Nara compound. Sasuke doesn’t even know what she’s panicking about but she can’t breathe and she actually draws blood scratching at her arms. 

Having an attack at all is frightening in itself. Sasuke went to her teammate’s house, got to confirm that all of her team was still okay, had only a single slightly uncomfortable conversation, and still ended up curled into a ball on her floor unable to catch her breath. 

It’s unnerving to find out that she doesn’t actually need anything to go wrong for her to break down.

\---

Sasuke stays curled on the floor in her dream. When she finally tries to rise from it, she finds that she no longer can. Her body has melted into the wood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In general, I love comments of all kinds including short, long, concrit, questions, and just singular emojis, so feel free to give me any feedback you're willing to share.


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